


1x01 - The Cabin In The Void

by hanarmontana



Series: Strange Telephone [1]
Category: Strange Telephone
Genre: Gen, Horror, Science Fiction, Video Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22555615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanarmontana/pseuds/hanarmontana
Summary: Jill, a young woman, and Graham, a floating magical telephone, are trapped in an ethereal void of nothingness. Their home? A place they have come to call The Core, which is a place nothing else can enter without their permission. Their blockade? The door. An enormous door that looms over them, marked with the symbol of a key on it, emitting subtle blue light. Their goal? To find a way past the door and go home. Until then, Jill & Graham traverse to different planes of existence using Graham's keypad and random telephone numbers, often coming upon cute creatures and fun experiences. But this changes when Jill & Graham happen upon a cabin that hides a dark entity, one that will stop at absolutely nothing to keep them from leaving. Soon, afraid, confused and hunted, Jill & Graham realize that their goal is no longer just something to work towards, it's something they must achieve if they wish to survive.
Series: Strange Telephone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622905





	1x01 - The Cabin In The Void

"Yeah, but like...what if it does matter?" Jill asked, tossing another stick into the fire as she raised her head back up, glancing at the large orange blob creature sitting across from her, "What if every single thing in the world matters? What if everything has inherent value and we just pick and choose which ones are worth keeping when in reality it's all worth keeping and we just don't realize it until it's too late? That's how we ended up with endangered species."

"What is an endangered species?" the orange blob asked quizzically, sitting on the ground on the other side of the fire.

"Where I come from," Jill said, pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, "We have animals that, if overhunted or something, become endangered meaning that they are in danger of going extinct. Going away forever. It's a horribly sad thing, but it happens, like, all the time. And it's not entirely peoples fault, I mean plenty of species have gone extinct just over time naturally as well, but we have definitely been the underlying cause of it in the most recent times. We don't seem to understand the values of things."

"Like?" the orange blob asked, furrowing its brow, confused.

"Like..." Jill looked around until she spotted a yellow flower and picked it up, "Like this flower, take this flower for instance. This flower has value. You can leave it in the ground to grow and it can provide nectar to insects or beauty to the surrounding landscape, or you can pick it and give it to someone that you care about, to show them how much they mean to you. Where I come from, flowers are a big sign of love."

Jill stood up, walked around the fire to the orange blob and plopped the flower against its head, sticking it there. The orange blob glanced upwards at the flower, now resting gently on its head, and began smiling, slapping its short tentacles together happily. Jill smiled and walked back to her seat, sitting back down. She looked at Graham, who was just sitting on the ground beside her, resting, before looking back at the orange blob. She sighed and tucked some hair back behind her ear, looking around at the bushes and dark sky that filled her vision.

"Even I have value?" the blob asked.

"Of course you do!" Jill said, almost giggling, "Everything and everyone has some sort of value! We're having a pleasant conversation right now, you're giving me something to do, you're making me happier, that gives you value! But you also have value because you're the only one of you that I've seen so far, and that makes you unique, therefore you have great value!"

She sighed and looked down at her shoes.

"It can be hard though, sometimes, to remember that you have value, so please try never to forget that, okay?" she asked, and the blob nodded, as well as a blob can possibly nod. With that, Jill began packing up her things, her axe and her lantern, into her small pack and pulling the straps over her shoulders, before tapping Graham on what one can only assume is a telephones head, thus waking him from his nap. He looked up at her with an appearance of half asleep and half annoyed.

"Are you ready?" he asked, and she nodded.

Graham started to float into the sky, reaching shoulder level, while Jill turned and looked at the blob again. She smiled and waved at them, and they waved back as she picked up the receiver on Graham, pulled out a small notebook from her dress pocket and a pen and wrote down the number she had dialed to come here. She'd come back sometime, she liked this place, she liked this blob. It was a nice reprieve from her usual thrusts into absolute terror and confusion. She then put the notebook and pen back into her dress pocket, looked at Graham and started dialing. He started giggling as her fingertips danced from button to button and she rolled her eyes.

"Oh god, be quiet," she muttered.

"I'm sorry, I'm ticklish!" he said, and within seconds, she'd pushed in another 7 digit code and they were gone.

* * *

The Core.

The place Jill & Graham called home, or as close to a home as they could find. Since they'd started on this expedition, the details for the origins of which were a bit hazy to Jill, they'd managed to bring back a number of items to The Core to somewhat furnish it like a real home. Showing back up, Jill sat down in the one wooden chair she'd been able to find along their travels and bring back with her and sighed. She felt so exhausted every single time after dialing, like it'd taken all the energy out of her; simply performing the act of punching in numbers. She watched as Graham floated around The Core endlessly, looking at all their things before finally stopping and looking back at her.

"That wasn't so bad," he said.

"No, that was pleasant," Jill replied, "I wish we could've brought goo monster back with us though. They were so sweet and innocent."

"We can't just keep calling things by what they are, I feel like that's wrong somehow," Graham said, "We should give them names."

"Personalizing them would hurt too much though," Jill said.

"Yes, but not doing so is just kind of insulting," Graham said, "But I agree with you, Bradley-"

"Bradley?"

"That's goo monsters name now, Bradley," Graham said before continuing, "Bradley was very kind and curious, like a small inquisitive child. I'll miss their naivety, their wonderment at everything. But life goes on and such. At least we were able to depart some wisdom onto them before we left."

"I. I departed some wisdom onto them. You slept," Jill said.

"Hey, I'm the one who actually has to take us through interdimensional wormholes or however it works," Graham said, furrowing his brow, "It's exhausting work being amazing."

Jill smiled at her friend and shook her head, looking away at a small lamp on the floor. It was a lamp she'd brought back from one of their dials; a beautiful lamp, with a classic stained glassed pattern on the shade and a brass body with a simple pullchain. She sighed and winced.

"Do you think they remember us? I mean, after we leave?" she asked.

"Perhaps," Graham replied, floating towards her, now hovering just in front of her at eye level, "I'm not going to say they all do, as I don't think some of them have the mental capacity to remember anything, but I'm willing to bet that a good number of them certainly do, yes. Why? Do you want to be remembered or forgotten?"

Jill went silent. That was a question she'd never really been able to answer, honestly. She was afraid one made her sound egotistical and the other made her sound depressed. So instead she just looked away, back towards the lamp and waved her hand at him, before pulling the notebook out of her dress pocket again and thumbing through it. After a few minutes, she put it back into the pocket, picked up her bag and walked across the room towards Graham, pulling his receiver off and dialing something random. After a brief moment of bright white flashes, they were gone again.

* * *

She'd never seen this place before...

...this cabin. It was small and looked old, but cozy, and in all the times she'd dialed randomly, she'd never once come across it. She'd come across houses before in general, rooms and such, but nothing like this, this...was different, somehow. Jill slowly approached the cabin, Graham floating just by her right shoulder, but as she reached out to touch it the doorknob, he began to float back from her. Jill stopped and glanced over her shoulder at him.

"What?" she asked, confused, "What is it?"

"I don't know. Something doesn't feel right," Graham replied, but she shrugged it off, turned the knob, and went inside anyway.

Inside was stunning; fully furnished, a classic stone made fireplace with a lovely red couch and gorgeous oak tables. Jill strolled inside, not feeling the least cautious, if only because of the overwhelming beauty that lay before her. She dragged her fingertips across the smooth finish of the tables and played with the dangling edges of the cloth overlay that had been left atop it, smiling at it. She'd always loved cozy little hideaways such as this, and found herself remarkably comfortable almost instantly. In fact, she toyed with, for a brief moment, going back to The Core and gathering their things to bring it all back here; thusly setting up shop in this cabin as their new makeshift home. She looked into the fireplace as Graham floated along, looking at the photos hanging on the wall, his brow furrowing more now.

"This is lovely," Jill said, jabbing at the innards of the fireplace with a poker from the stand.

"Does it...does it not alarm you that there's photographs here?" Graham asked, "There's _never_ photographs. Whenever we've found a place before, a house, a room, what have you...there's never been photographs. They've been barren, devoid of all personality, but this place has, might I call it, history? This is suspect to me. Does this not alarm you in the slightest?"

"It is peculiar, certainly, but maybe it just means that we're not the only ones here," Jill said, walking over to where Graham was floating.

"And that doesn't frighten you?" he asked.

"I find the idea absolutely lovely, to finally have another person around. People spend far too much time with their phones nowadays as it is, and theirs don't talk," Jill said, smirking at him as she looked into one of the frames and noticed a family sitting in the cabin they were now standing in. The family looked happy, warm, bright. The looked like they loved one another, and were enjoying one anothers company. Graham turned and looked towards the fireplace, noticing a slimy black tendril dropping in from the chimney. He floated towards it, glancing down at the lifeless tendril now lying on the floor, but it didn't move a muscle. Jill moved on to the next photograph, where the family in it were now missing a member; a little girl from the previous photo. They didn't appear as happy in this photo. Well, they were smiling, definitely, but it wasn't happiness playing on their lips, it was the smile of madness. Graham floated down closer to the tendril, which appeared to be oozing black slime onto the floor, and was surprised when it quickly whipped up towards him, forcing him to briskly dip to the side to avoid being hit.

"Jill!" he shouted, turning to look at her, "We need to go!"

As Jill turned to look at him, she watched the tendril wrap around Graham and begin to slither back up the chimney, dragging her best, and only, friend in with it. She screamed and ran at the fireplace, quickly grabbing Graham's receiver, gripping tightly to keep him from being taken any further. She heard the shattering of windows and looked behind her to see more slimy tendrils entering through the cabin windows, as the front door opened and a black mass that seemed to encompass the entire doorway stared at her. A mouth began to form on the center of the black mass, rows of razor sharp teeth gleaming in the candlelight of the cabin, and this terrified Jill beyond comprehension. She grabbed tighter onto the receiver and, slipping her fingers into his cord, finally managed to pull Graham free of the tendril. Together they stumbled onto the floor, before Jill picked him up and raced to a staircase in the back, which hadn't been there mere seconds ago.

One arm wrapped around Graham, she used her free hand to grab the banister and head up the stairs just a tendril slipped through the cracks of the stairs and wrapped itself around her ankle. She screamed and began kicking to free herself. When that proved fruitless, she let go of the rail and instead reached to the axe handle sticking out from her back and pulled it loose from her bag. She screamed and began hacking at the tendril, which quickly let go upon contact. Jill continued running up the stairs, axe in one hand and Graham tucked under her other arm. As they reached the landing at the top, they started running down the hall, only to notice that the tendrils and black ooze were now beginning to come out each of the doors in the hallway towards them. She turned and noticed the hall extended in the other direction as well, which she was almost certain hadn't been the case when they'd reached the top, but she couldn't bother thinking about logic right now, and instead she just took off. They reached the last door at the end of the hall and raced inside the room, slamming the door shut.

Jill slid away into the center of the room and quickly began fumbling with Graham to dial a number on his keypad while the tendrils banged at the door and black slime oozed in underneath the frame. Graham looked genuinely worried as Jill's trembling fingers just barely managed to push in the number for The Core, and within seconds, the door had broken open and the mouth was staring at them. She finished the number, and away they went. Jill landed hard on her back, coughing as she stared up at the void overhead. Graham groaned and waited a moment before floating again.

"What the hell was that?!" Jill shouted, "What _was_ that?!"

"I have no idea, Jill, don't ask me," Graham said, "I've never seen anything like that before."

"That whole place changed like a puzzle each time we looked away. A staircase that was never there, a hallway that seemed to never end, and whatever that...that _mouth_ thing was...good god, man. I think I'm going to hyperventilate," Jill said, quickly digging through her bag and reaching for a paper bag which she quickly lifted to her lips and began breathing into.

"Are you okay?" Graham asked, and she nodded, still breathing into the bag.

After a few moments, she stopped and, seemingly composed once again, she stood up and stared at Graham.

"What was the number you put in?" Graham asked, and she tried to remember.

"Um...something like, 555-4895..." Jill said, "It was like a trap. It lured us inside, it lowered our defenses and got us comfortable and then it attacked. How can a place itself be sentient?"

"I...I have no answers, Jill, I'm sorry. I wish that I could tell you something that might help," Graham said, "Maybe next we can find a psychiatrists office so you can properly work through this."

Jill did laugh at this, and appreciated Graham for being able to break the tension. She quickly opened her notebook up and jotted down the number with a big **"X"** on the top of the page. She put the pen down and looked at Graham, the two of them just staring at one another for a silent moment, trying to take in what they'd just experienced.

"...it had a mouth," she finally said quietly, on the verge of tears, "It wanted to eat us."

"I...I don't...know what to say," Graham said, stammering, a first for him.

Jill laid down on her back and covered her face with her hands, screaming into them loudly. She'd liked her time here with Graham, and had enjoyed the time they spent traversing different planes together to discover new creatures and things. But this...this was the first time in a long time that simply made her wish she could go home again. That night, while Graham slept, Jill was still lying on her side, staring at the giant key symbol on the door that loomed over them. She still didn't know where she was, why was she was here and how to leave. She'd become so complacent in her time spent here that she'd managed to forget about any of that for a while, but after The Tar, which is what she and Graham had begun referring to it as...she just couldn't have that allowance anymore. She needed to find some way to either protect herself or leave. She looked down to her waist, where Graham was sleeping, and she rested her hand gently atop his receiver, shutting her eyes.

And if she could...she'd find a way to bring him with her.

That she promised herself.


End file.
